What I have found most striking about living in South Africa
is the disparity that exists in almost every element of life. When you are in the cities you find yourself in
the modern world with most of the amenities you could ever want. But then, not more than a couple miles away,
you’ll find a township with few if any paved roads, thousands of tin shacks,
garbage piled in the streets, inadequate sewer systems, and little to no
electricity. As you can imagine,
bouncing between these two different worlds can make life here frustrating especially
since it’s clear that the infrastructure for all of the necessary services
exist, but they are poorly maintained and in some cases, not even utilized at
all.
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| Tin shacks and trash piled up on the outskirts of Ducats |
The most gleaming example of a community that has been left
behind is Ducats, which is a resettlement area outside of East London. Being a resettlement area, most of the houses
are government-built two-room homes meant to house people that have been moved from
over-crowded communities. Despite the
fact that these houses were built within the last 5-7 years, most of them receive
no upkeep from the government and as a result, are starting to fall apart. Many people have erected tin shacks as
supplement shelter or to make up for the limited space of these homes, leading
the people in this community to revert back to living in the same conditions in
that caused them to be “resettled” in the first place. Compounding the poor structure of these homes
is the facts that they were not built with any kind of sewer or water hook ups,
forcing the people of this community to use communal taps for their daily water
supply and communal latrines for sanitation.
Trash removal is rare, livestock freely roams the community and while
there are outlined streets, no formal roads (dirt or paved) exist.
Probably the most egregious oversight in the planning of
this community has to be that there is no clinic. The nearest clinic is about 5 miles down the
road, so definitely not a walkable distance for anyone who is sick. There are public taxis (minibuses), but that
trip will cost an individual $3 each trip, which may not sound like a lot, but
trust me, that’s a decent chunk of a person’s daily living expenses in this
community. At one point, Ducats was
receiving health services from a mobile clinic, which in itself has its own
limitations on the care that can be provided and the number of people that can
be reached in a day, that used to come once a month. This service has recently been suspended due
to provincial cuts in the fuel budget for Department of Health vehicles,
leaving the community with no local services at all.
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| Ducats fieldworkers testing at a community events |
Despite all of these challenges, the community of Ducats is resilient. They are so active within their community and
are hungry for change. They are
constantly holding stakeholder meetings to voice their concerns about service
delivery and even take it upon themselves to reach out to departments like
social services to come and provide information to the community and host
events to spread awareness. Even the
CMMB fieldworkers that were recently hired for the TB project are motivated to
make a difference. Aside from doing an
amazing job providing door-to-door testing services, they want to make sure
that their new skills can be utilized even after their contract with CMMB ends,
and have thus made arrangements with the nearest clinic to continue to provide
testing and other health services as volunteers for the clinic. This is just one of the many reasons why I
will always have a spot in my heart for the community of Ducats.
